Extracted Text

The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:

THE STORY OF THE PICTUREHE FIRST ship that brought a cargo of African slaves| to North America started the series of troublous eventspreceding the birth of a great nation. Abolition wassubsequently advocated, but the idea of social equalitywas never considered. The South declared it wouldsecede, if in 1860 a Republican president was elected.That president, Abraham Lincoln, issued a call for75,000 volunteers. For the first time in Americanannals he used the Federal power to subdue thesovereignty of individual States.The Stoneman boys of Pennsylvania had beenhouse guests at Piedmont, S. C., of their boardingschoolchums, the Cameron boys. Phil Stoneman andMargaret Cameron, "fair as a flower," had looked,longed and loved. Ben Cameron had never met ElsieStoneman, yet the daguerreotype of her he had pilferedfrom Phil seemed about the dearest, sweetest thing inthe world. The younger lads of the two houses-tooyoung for sentiment and romance-frolicked likefriendly young colts. Most charming and lovable ofall the Cameron clan was the Doctor and Mrs.Cameron's youngest daughter Flora.When War casts its shadow over the land, Phil and Tod Stoneman are summonedto fight for the Stars and Stripes; Ben Cameron and his two younger brothers, for theStars and Bars. The grim years drag along. Piedmont gayly enters the conflict, butruin and devastation follow. The town gets a foretaste of rapine and pillage in the raidof a mixed body of white and colored guerillas against it. The scale of events inclinesto the Union cause. Southern wealth and resources are burned or commandeered bySherman in his march to the sea. Meantime two of the Cameron boys have perishedin battle, one of them face to face with his dying Chum Tod. Grant is pressing the Confederacyin the famous campaign around Petersburg. When Confederate supplies arerunning low, one of their provision trains is cut off and the "little Colonel," Ben Cameron,is called upon by Gen. Lee to lead a counter attack and thus, by diverting the enemy,aid in the rescue of the train. We see the panorama of a battlefield flung over manymiles of mountain and valley, the opposing intrenchments and the artillery fire, Col.Cameron and his men forming for the advance, their charge over broken ground, thegrim harvest of death that swept most of them away, the bayonet rush of the devotedfew right up to the trenches, the physical hand-grapple with the enemy, and Cameron,